Process Automation (PA) applications focus on automating high-level business processes across disparate systems. For example, business processes generally include a plurality of actions and/or functions that are normally executed on workstations, servers, and mainframe systems. Such actions and functions include, for example, those needed to perform certain tasks such as adding or deleting an employee, preparing for system outages, and generating automatic reports. Thus, a PA application associated with the business process may be required to automate the execution of these actions and/or functions on the mainframe system as part of automating the overall business process.
Because PA applications operate at a high-level, they are typically not as efficient or effective at handling mainframe automation as applications that are specifically designed and written to perform mainframe automation. As such, most users simply either invoke existing mainframe automation manually outside of the PA application or attempt to implement existing mainframe automation into their PA applications. However, implementing mainframe automation into a PA application requires converting existing, sophisticated mainframe automation constructs into new automation constructs that are compatible with the PA applications. Such efforts are time consuming and expensive, and the resultant PA application is unlikely to be as effective or as efficient as an existing mainframe automation application specifically designed and written to perform the mainframe automation.